Reading Before I Fall
by Spark Firebug
Summary: This is my first story, so be nice. I believe every book should have at least one fan fiction story where all the characters sit down and read the book. I noticed this particular book was significantly lacking in this department so this is my solution. Enjoy!


_Okay people, this is my first story so be gentle. This is my favorite book of all times, and I firmly believe every book should have a fanfiction where all the main characters have to sit down and read it. My inspiration is from another fanfiction story for the book series, Vampire Academy. She's on the second book and the story is called Book Club Frostbite, Victoria Marie Dragomir. I defiantly think you should read her stories too. I'm not going to take the time and describe every character, mostly because I'm too lazy. If you're here, then you've read the book and you already have an image for them._

_This is going to be the only Disclaimer, because I don't feel like repeating myself every chapter. I do NOT own this beautiful unfortunately. If I did, I'd be rich. But sadly, my name is not Lauren Oliver. Lauren wrote everything in bold and I wrote the rest. I think I've said enough now, so I hope you enjoy!_

Reading Before I Fall

Prologue

Juliet's POV

I stare up at the unmarked building right in front of me. It was huge and made out of breaks. This afternoon after school, I received a letter on my doorstep an hour ago, saying to come to this address at five O'clock, along with my little sister, with suitcases with clothes that will last a week. Marian is standing beside with a look of curiosity and wariness. I must admit, I was very iffy about this place myself, it didn't exactly scream welcome.

"Should we go in?" Marain asked me, looking to me for confirmation as always. I look back at the building and say, "Why not?" and then we are trudging up to the steel door.

The door opens up to a long, dark hallway, though I can see yet another steel door on the other side, instantly I am walking towards it, with Marian right behind me. As we get closer, I can hear voices on the other side, many voices by the sound of it.

I open the door and I'm shocked at all the familiar faces: Lindsay, Elody, Ally, Rob, and Kent, Mr. and Mrs. Kingston and their youngest daughter Izzy. Only daughter, she had a sister once. That sister is the reason I'm standing here right now.

A month ago, I was dead set on dieing. For some unknown reason, Samantha Kingston, one of my main tormentors, saved my life at the price of her own. Since her funeral, the tormenting had stopped. My guess is her friends didn't want to tarnish her memory by throwing out her last wish. The very same friends who are staring at me right this moment.

"Finally!" said my long time bullying, and my old best friend, Lindsay Edgecombe, the one who started it all. "Now, calm down. Juliet, Marain, thank you for coming," said the only person I don't know in this room. She must have read my mind, because she then smiled and said, "My name is Lauren Oliver. I'm a . . . old friend of Sam's, and I'm here on her behalf." Everyone was sitting down on couches and chairs, Marian and I look the only vacant love seat. I looked at Lauren as if to say, continue.

"I'm here because you all have questions, and I have the answers, though you're going to stay here a couples days to find out. None of you know about the life changing journey that Sam went on, but by the time you leave here, you will. Down that second hallway, there are rooms that have your names on them, if you keep walking, you'll find the fully-stocked kitchen. By the end of the week, if you're finished I let you out." Everyone is a little disoriented with this information, but Kent McFuller snaps out of it first.

"Finish with what?" Lauren just smiles and says, "With this," She pulls out a book from her bag. The title is before i fall, and there is a girl lying down in the grass, with a close up on her face. But it's not just any girl, it's Sam. She then places the book in my hands, "Maybe you should read first Juliet. I hesitate, but only a second before I start read the information on the back aloud.

**WHAT IF you had only one day to live? What would you do? Who would you kiss? And how far would you go to save your own life?**

**Samantha Kingston has it all: the world's most crush-worthy boyfriend, three amazing best friends, and first pick of everything at Thomas Jefferson High-from the best table in the cafeteria to the choicest parking spot, Friday, February 12, should be just any another day in her charmed life.**

**Instead, it turns out to be her last.**

**Then she gets a second chance. Seven chances, in fact. Reliving her last day during one miraculous week, she will untangle the mystery surrounding her death-and discover the true value of everything she is in danger of losing.**

Everyone is quiet, then Lindsay says, "What does it mean seven chances?" but no one answers, because the one with all the answers is gone. Somehow Lauren has vanished.

"She's just going to hold us hostage for a whole week in here," Rob practically yells. Kent is the one to reply, "Well we might as well read it and find out what happened to Sam. It's not like we have anything else to do." I continue through the prologue.

_**They say that just before you die you whole life flashes before your eyes, but that's not how it happened for me.**_

_**To be honest, I'd always thought the whole final-moment, mental life-scan thing sounded pretty awful. Some things are better left buried and forgotten, as my mom would say. I'd be happy to forget all of fifth grade, for example (the glasses-and-pink-braces period), and does anybody want to relive the first day of middle school? Add in all of the boring family vacations, pointless algebra classes, period cramps, and bad kisses I barely lived through the first time around . . .**_

_**The truth is, though, I wouldn't have minded reliving my greatest hits: Rob Cokran and I first hooked up in the middle of the dance floor at homecoming, so everyone saw and knew we were together; Lindsay, Elody, Ally, and I got drunk and tried to make snow angels in May, leaving person-sized imprints in Ally's lawn; my sweet-sixteen party, when we set out a hundred tea lights and danced on the table in the backyard; the time Lindsay and I pranked Clara Seause on Halloween, got chased by the cops, and laughed so hard we almost threw up-the things I wanted to remember; the things I wanted to be remembered for.**_

"Well, well, well; you girls seemed to have some really wild days. Haven't you?" Mr. Kingston is staring at Lindsay, Elody, and Ally, who look a little sheepish. Elody is the one to reply, "You know how high school is, sometimes you need an outlet," Ally follows up with, "Besides, it's all in the past now."

_**But before I died I didn't think of Rob, or any other guy. I didn't think of all the outrageous things I'd done with my friends. I didn't even think of my family, or the way the morning light turns the walls in my bedroom the color of cream, or the way the azaleas outside my window smell in July, a mixture of honey and cinnamon. Instead, I thought of Vicky Hallinan.**_

"Her?!" That came from Lindsay in a voice that held annoyance, shock, and hurt in it. "Out of all the people she could have thought about in her last moment, it was her? She didn't even know her, they weren't friends!"

I couldn't help it; I had to set her straight, "Maybe, unlike you, she had a heart. She cared for everyone, not just you!" All eyes are now on me, but I'm only looking at Lindsay, whose face is filled with so much rage that I almost cringe. "You do you think you're talking to, Psycho! You shouldn't even be here, you're the reason Sam's dead in the first place," I just let her let it out. I know she is just venting, and I've heard it all before. The stares at the funeral said it all. "Why did she save you anyway? You're worthless, you're-"

"That's enough!" this surprisingly came from little Izzy, lisp and all. She was glaring at Lindsay, "Leave her alone! Why do you treat her that way!? What did she ever do to you!? How can you say she's worthless when Sammy died for her? If you say she's worthless, then you're saying Sammy died for nothing! And she didn't, she died a hero!" by now she is tearing up, she wipes at her face, and smiles at me asked if I could start reading. It took me a moment, in an awkward silence, to pick up the book again.

_**Specifically, I thought of the time in fourth grade when Lindsay announced in front of the whole gym class that she wouldn't have Vicky on her dodgeball team. "She's too fat," Lindsay blurted out. "You could hit her with your eyes closed." I wasn't friends with Lindsay yet, but even then she had this way of saying things that made them hilarious, and I laughed along with everyone else while Vicky's face turned as purple as the underside of a storm cloud.**_

_**That's what I remembered in that before-death instant, when I was supposed to be having some big revelation about my past: the smell of varnish and the squeak of our sneakers on the polished floor; the tightness of my polyester shorts; the laughter echoing around the big, empty space like there were way more than twenty-five people in the gym.**_

_**And Vicky's face.**_

_**The weird thing is that I hadn't thought about that in forever. It was one of those memories I didn't even know I remembered, if you know what I mean. It's not like Vicky was traumatized or anything. That's just the kind of thing that kids do to each other. It's no big deal. There's always going to be a person laughing and somebody getting laughed at. It happens every day, in every school, in every town in America-probably in the world, for all I know. The whole point of growing up is learning to stay of the laughing side.**_

_**Vicky wasn't very fat to begin with-she just had some baby weight on her face and stomach-and before high school she's lost that and grown three inches. She even became friends with Lindsay. They played field hockey together and said hi in the halls. One time, our freshman year, Vicky brought it up at a party-we were all pretty tipsy-and we laughed and laughed, Vicky most of all, until her face turned almost as purple as it had all those years ago in the gym.**_

_**That was weird thing number one.**_

_**Even weirder than that was the fact that we'd all just been talking about it-how it would be just before you died, I mean.**_

"That was stupid, it's like you're asking to be shot down," Rob explains, Kent glares at him and says, "And that was rude. You just interrupted Juliet," Rob glares back, "So," They go into and all-out glare war. So I decide to clear my throat, to call attention back to me, "I don't mind, I think we're here reading this because Sam wants us to hear it. To understand what really happened. And that takes communicating between everyone to put the pieces together," Everyone is staring at me, but not in a bad way, like they agree; even the girls. "Now can we start again?" Everyone silently replies, and I look back at the book.

_**I don't remember exactly how it came up, except Elody was complaining that I always scroll through Lindsay's iPod, even though I was supposed to have deejay privileges. I was trying to explain my "greatest hits" theory of death, and we were all picking out what those would be. Lindsay picked finding out that she got into Duke, obviously, and Ally-who was bitching about the cold, as usual, and threatening to drop dead right there of pneumonia-participated long enough to say she wished she could relive her first hookup with Matt Wilde forever, which surprised no one.**_

Elody and Lindsay are cracking up and Ally is blushing madly.

_**Lindsay and Elody were smoking, and freezing rain was coming in through the cracked-open windows. The road was narrow and winding, and on either side of us the dark, stripped branches of trees lashed back and forth, like the wind had set them dancing.**_

_**Elody put on "Splinter" by Fallacy to piss off Ally, maybe because she was sick of her whining. It was Ally's song with Mat, who had dumped her in September. Ally called her a bitch and unbuckled her seat belt, leaning forward and trying to grab the iPod. Lindsay complained that someone was elbowing her in the neck. The cigarette dropped from her mouth and landed between her thighs. She started cursing and trying to brush the embers off the seat cushion and Elody and Ally were still fighting and I was trying to talk over them, reminding them all of the time we'd made snow angels in May. The tires skidded a little on the wet road, and the car was full of cigarette smoke, little wisps rising like phantoms in the air.**_

_**Then all of the sudden there was a flash of white in front of the car. Lindsay yelled something-words I couldn't make out, something like **_**sit**_** or **_**shit**_** or **_**sight**_**- and suddenly the car was flipping off the road and into the black mouth of the woods. I heard a horrible, screeching sound-metal on metal, glass shattering, a car folding in two-and smelled fire. I had time to wonder whether Lindsay had put her cigarette out.**_

_**Then Vicky Hallinan's face came rising out of the past. I heard laughter echoing and rolling all around me, swelling into a scream.**_

_**Then nothing.**_

_**The thing is, you don't know. It's not like you wake up with a bad feeling in your stomach. You don't see shadows where there shouldn't be any. You don't remember to tell your parents that you love them or- in my case-remember to say good-bye to them at all.**_

_**If you're like me, you wake up seven minutes and forty-seven seconds before your best friend is supposed to pick you up. You're too busy worrying about how many roses you're going to get on Cupid Day to do anything more than throw on your clothes, brush your teeth, and pray to God you left your makeup in the bottom of your messenger bag so you can do it in the car.**_

_**If you're like me, your last day starts like this:**_

"That's it for the prologue, who wants to read next," I say as I put the book down. "I do, I do, I do!" Izzy says while jumping up and down. "Mrs. Kingston laughs and says, "Maybe that's not a good idea, you never know the adult language that could be in it," she says as she stares at the girls. "I guess I'll do it," Lindsay says and I silently hand her the book, she clears her throat and begins to read.

_Okay so this is really just a preview. I am borrowing the book from school and the dead line to turn it in is Monday so I will not be updating all summer! I have looked everywhere in my area for it, but it's like nonexistent. In the meantime, tell me what you think about it. Is it worth the trouble to continue? Feel free to express yourself, but constant flaming will be deleted and blocked. Until next time!_


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